Learning Sites and Facilities

As a student at DMS, you will be part of northern New England's most extensive clinical teaching network—a network that, along with the off-campus clerkship opportunities, exposes you to a breadth of patients, delivery systems, and management models that is unusual in American health education.

The primary teaching site for DMS students is Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center (DHMC), one of two rural academic medical centers in the country. A Level 1 Trauma Center, DHMC serves a patient population of 1.6 million, drawn from across Northern New England. DHMC is home to Norris Cotton Cancer Center, one of only 39 National Cancer Institute designated comprehensive cancer care centers in the country.

Other important centers at DHMC include the Children's Hospital at Dartmouth and the Center for Shared Decision Making. Supporting these centers are two additional major research sites, the Borwell and Rubin Research Buildings. DMS receives more than $137 million annually in sponsored research. The near future will see the opening of three added centers, a Comprehensive Cardiovascular Center, the Translational Research Building, and a new home for The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice.

Key Partners of DHMC

Veterans Affairs Medical Center, White River Junction, Vermont. Located 15 minutes from DMS, the VA includes the National Center for Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, the VA Outcomes Group (a division of The Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice at DMS), and the Yasinski Research Building, which receives over $5 million in annual research support.

New Hampshire Hospital, Concord. This state facility is affiliated with the DMS Department of Psychiatry. The Joint Commission on the Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations rated the New Hampshire Hospital first in its class in the United States.

The Family Medicine Institute, Augusta, Maine; Maine-Dartmouth Family Practice in Fairfield, Maine. Both practices are longstanding rural health-care practices and training sites for Dartmouth's primary-care clerkships. The practices are associated with Maine-General
Medical Center.

DHMC Honors

In 2007, DHMC was granted the honor of inclusion in Hospitals for a Healthy Environment's new Environmental Leadership Circle-a designation that recognizes health care's outstanding environmental leaders- for showing continuous and sustainable efforts in environmental performance and a commitment to environmental health.

Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center is certified as an ALS Center of Excellence by the national ALS Association. Headed by Dr. Jeffrey Cohen, Associate Chief of Neurology at DHMC and Professor of Neurology at Dartmouth Medical School, the ALS center was the 24th to be certified by the ALSA, the program that sets the national standard for clinical care for people and families living with ALS.

DHMC is among a select group of 100 US hospitals that are producing the best clinical outcomes for cardiovascular care, and which treat heart patients in less time and at a lower cost, according to a 2007 study by Thompson Healthcare. If all cardiovascular hospitals achieved the same results as the award winning hospitals, more than 7,000 lives would be saved annually.

Norris Cotton Cancer Center, where patients are partners with their care team, allows opportunities for integration of research and clinical care at DHMC.

"As modern as a
hospital can be."

In April, 2007, The Richard Barrett Pain Management Center at DHMC was one of 14 pain management centers from across the country recognized for excellence by the American Pain Society for its efforts to provide innovative, patient-centered, multidisciplinary care and to improve the quality of pain management across the continuum of care.